Thanks Tim – I’m glad to be blogging about poultry !
By way of introduction, I’m a Yankee living in the southern middle section of the State of Michigan (look for a land mass in the US in the shape of a mitten surrounded by water- that’s me – see me waving??).
I’ve lived in the same county in MIchigan for my whole life, except when I was an exchange student in Belgium longer ago than I wish to discuss. I have been to your lovely country twice, although I’ve never been farther north than Bath.
I’ve been happily married forever (or so it seems), and we have a small “micro-farm” on 3 acres. Right now, all we have is chickens and heritage turkeys, although there are a couple of sheep and a goat on the agenda before the end of the month. At one time or another we’ve had rabbits, geese, turkeys, chix, ducks, hogs, sheep, and dairy cows (Jerseys). We raise all our fruits and vegetables organically, and have for the last 25 years.
Alas, organic chicken feed is SO expensive here that we would never be able to sell our chickens and eggs at a high enough cost to cover the feed, so we use an all-natural feed with herbal supplements added. We have to all of our starter feeds special ordered, as we don’t want to use medicated feed, and that’s all that is carried in the area. We use no drugs routinely, although I’m not against using antibiotics if I have a sick bird. All our birds are free range during the day, and locked up at night to keep the critters out.
My biggest misadventure has been trying was hatch turkey eggs. I’ve never had trouble hatching chix, so, silly me, thought turkeys would be the same. Three summers ago I started out with shipped eggs, as there was no one near us who had the breed I was interested in. Had one successful poult out of 24 eggs!! I’d hatched some chickens at the same time, so was planning on slipping them under a couple of broody hens when it got dark.
Hubby and I loaded up the babies, snuck out to the barn with a flashlight and swapped the eggs (we’d been changing them regularly) under the broodies for the babies. Thinking a baby was a baby, we put the poult under one of the hens with a half dozen chicks and went in and went to bed.
Next morning, we checked, and there were little heads, including one gray and yellow one sticking out from under the hen’s wings in the nests and we thought all was well. And it was— until the NEXT morning when the hens decided all their babies had “hatched” and they got off the nests.
They soon decided that the slightly larger gray and yellow baby did NOT belong. The poor poult kept trying to get back under “Mama’s” wing, and both she and the other hen would peck at her and drive her off into the corner. Poor, sad little thing! She was being driven off just like the poor baby in the story of The Ugly Duckling.
We put her back under the brooder alone, but soon found she would only eat when we were in the room. I read how a lone turkey would starve to death. So we added a couple of late hatch chickens that hadn’t done too well (who we’d named the Misfit Chickens) and she perked up. She was just enough larger that the Misfits would try and tuck under her wings to get warm. Too sweet.
We needed a name for her, of course – and we named her the only thing that seems fitting … SWAN.
So, I’ve spent the last couple of years explaining why I have a Swan that’s a turkey!
Candice
